Environmentalist Uses Tray at Sny-Phi After Having “One Too Many Plates”

Terror struck The Gallery at Snyder-Phillips last Monday morning as Environmental Studies and Sustainability major Raja Almasi found herself having to use a tray when eating lunch, due to her large sum of plates.

“It wasn’t quite something I expected to happen,” explained Almasi, “I just had so many interests from multiple stations, and I personally could not balance it all!”

Gifted with a unique palate, Almasi was craving the Italian sausage baked ziti, sweet and sour chicken, and “Big M.A.C. Pizza” all at once, but was well aware that each item was from a different station in the overpriced buffet.

“I just knew that it wouldn’t work out like I hoped. You go to Latitudes and get some chicken and rice, and they give you a plate. Then, you go to New Traditions and get yourself a heaping helping of ziti and some Bosco sticks and, regardless of the fact that it would fit just fine on the other plate, they won’t let you combine them! Finally, you make your way over to Ciao! and get yourself a slice of pizza, but it’s just gonna slide off the side if you don’t get a plate for that, too! Guess I don’t give a fuck about my moral compass anymore.”

Almasi was discontent with her tray, yet, as time went on, she did find some silver linings in the circumstance she was forced into.

“Initially, I planned on using my laptop as a tray, y’know, but it was far easier just to use the tray, because then I didn’t have to take my laptop out of my backpack. Interestingly enough, I wound up accidentally dropping some red sauce on the tray, so, like, at least my laptop isn’t all smeared with sauce and stuff now, y’know?”

Although Raja was displeased with her actions, she decided to make it a consciousness-raising activity for the entire cafeteria. Bravely, Almasi stood on the 4-person table that she reserved for herself, and gave the following speech:

“Fellow Gallery customers and staff,

We must not allow this to happen. I am currently in the possession of a tray. It may seem like nothing now, but, with the help of all of your trays, statistics show that things like this will wind up wasting, like, a lot of water and stuff. That water could totally be used elsewhere and is nothing but a nuisance to the poor man working tirelessly behind the scenes. ‘Why do I have one,’ you ask? ‘The Man’ decided that we are incapable of using a single plate at multiple stations, making for an even grander mess for the dishwasher. This makes it almost impossible to hold all of our plates simultaneousl-”

It was then that Lisa Banks-Jackson, 20, interrupted with “Then why don’t you just use your first plate to save yourself an entire damn table instead of using your backpack and then get into the next line?”

Seemingly humiliated and defeated, the environmental activist silently got off the table, grabbed her tray, and was greeted by an irate dishwasher glaring at her from inside the tray return. Almasi has yet to give a statement on her actions, but a potential sighting arose on Tuesday when a single tray of smoked chicken was found at “the circular table by the pillar” without an owner.